Life Changing RM 40,000

With many properties under her belt, 60-year-old Cynthia Tan is already a veteran real estate investor before joining Anyone Can be a Property Millionaire. Tan was in the beauty business in her younger days and was pretty successful even at an early age. By 25, she has saved up enough money and bought her first flat in Wangsa Maju for RM 38,000.

At that time, she had no concept of real estate as an investment and bought the house only to put a roof over her head. All that changed when one of her customers offered to show her a condominium unit near her current home.

It was a ground floor unit surrounded by greeneries and Tan fell instantly in love with it. She immediately agreed to the RM 130,000 asking price and bought her new home. It was only later she learned that the seller had bought the unit at launch from the developer for RM 90,000 barely six month before selling to her and walked away with a cool profit of RM40,000.

The experience changed Tan’s view on properties as an investable asset and started her on the path of real estate investment; a journey that she has been on for the past three decades.

Tan have invested in all types of properties over the years with varying results. Along the way, she bought a couple of overpriced units due to her inexperience but was lucky not to suffer major losses. Some properties that she sold have appreciated as much as four times and she is generally happy with her rental returns.

Moreover, the fact that Tan was able to achieve so much gains despite the missteps and the lack of a general investment strategy further bolstered her confidence in real estate development as the way forward. This is why she often advice young people to start investing early so as not to miss the opportunities.

However, Tan warns that investors must always be cautious in any dealings, particularly in properties that typically involve hundreds of thousands of ringgit. She has been cheated in the past and learned that one can never be too careful. It is a good idea to engage your own lawyer working towards your interest and the professional fees will pay for itself in the long term.

Finally, she advises investors to never stop learning about the art of real estate investing. The fundamentals of investing might not change much, but the market does and is always changing. Things that worked in the past might not work in the future and thus it pays to seek the opinion of those who are more knowledgeable.

At the end of the day, there are bound to be mistakes along the way, but as long as one does not waver from the dream, the knowledge gained will eventually lead to many right decisions that erase past mistakes, and onto success.